


Call A Friend

by Infinite_Monkeys



Series: Family Ties [8]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Avengers, Fluff, Gen, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Space Pen-Pals, Tony Stark Hates Flip Phones, Took Way Longer to Write Than The Quality Would Suggest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 11:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15884724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinite_Monkeys/pseuds/Infinite_Monkeys
Summary: Two tricksters can always make mischief, even if they're light-years apart.In which Tony Stark is trolled by Loki and Rocket.





	Call A Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rodina2000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodina2000/gifts).



> I do not own Marvel or any of Marvel's stuff.
> 
> Inspired by Rodina2000, who expressed the opinion that Loki and Rocket would make excellent partners in crime. I agree.

Tony Stark had plenty of ground rules for living in his tower, but only one was sacred.  
  
Thou shalt not, ever or for any reason, invade upon the private workshop.  
  
This edict was not without teeth. His workshop had the best locks he could design (far better than the best money could buy), and JARVIS had strict orders never to allow unauthorized personnel to enter. Unauthorized personnel, in most cases, meant anyone other than Tony Stark and maybe, maybe Pepper. The anti-burglar safeguards were vicious and vindictive as a retired-weapons-designer could ethically make them.  
  
A man's workshop was his private sanctum, his retreat, the arena in which he faced his problems down and overcame them.  
  
The current problem to be overcome was a particular hinge in the knee area of his suit. At the moment, it could either fold up neatly into an aerodynamically sleek suitcase or bend with a reasonable range of motion, but not both. He could either walk like no-knees-Ned or have a suit that folded like bad origami.  
  
This particular problem was not yielding to the usual methods, which usually meant he was running on too little sleep, but for once he had slept the full, recommended eight hours. In some ways, he felt, getting a reasonable night's rest almost made things worse. It was like his body and mind realized what they were missing and went on strike for better working conditions.  
  
He had his Classic Rock playlist turned up to eleven and holographic plans suspended in a full three-hundred-sixty degree display, which was why it was devastatingly alarming to turn around and find himself face-to-face with Lord Voldemort.  
  
Well, that was unfair, he knew it was unfair, but Loki was tall and pale and thin and wearing all black and above all _not supposed to be in here scaring him_.  
  
"Gargh," he said normally, and definitely not like the shriek of a terrified five-year-old child.  
  
"What's this?" Loki pointed to one of the blueprints, squinting at it curiously.  
  
"How did you get in here?" His heart hammered in his chest at a rate that was fairly alarming, actually. He'd have to ask Bruce if that was normal. Note to self.  
  
"I walked," he said, running a hand back and forth through the projection like a child exploring a puddle. "What are you doing with this?"  
  
Tony Stark, at this point, had two options. He could continue to try and get answers out of Loki, which experience told him would be about as productive as trying to arm wrestle the Hulk, or he could talk about his latest engineering roadblock.  
  
Back when he was in school Tony had this friend who tutored some—fairly advanced, for their grade—physics.  
  
Well, more 'dude he got into trouble with occasionally' than friend, but hey, high school was not a time for making wise choices.  
  
The thing was, this guy was smart, but he knew next to nothing about physics. Well, compared to Tony Stark, so he may have been halfway-decent, but definitely he wasn't tutor material.  
  
When Tony asked him how he did it, he told him that an amazing number of the high-level students figured out the answer while trying to explain their problem to him. He would sit, and listen, and do nothing, and eventually they'd work it out and thank him for his help.  
  
"What about when they don't?" Tony had asked him.  
  
"Then it's usually a math error," he said. Their conversation got cut short after that, but the physics-ignorant-physics-tutor stuck with him.  
  
The conversation came back to him now, and he thought, hey, why not. Nothing to lose.  
  
So he pulled the projection closer and started pointing out components. What they were, how they moved, and what he wanted them to do. He outlined the problem he was having, explained it as simply as he was able, and nothing. His brain fell along the same old tracks that had worn a groove into his thoughts over the past day-and-a-half.  
  
When he finished Loki blinked at the hologram with a bemused expression, and he realized he'd run out of time to have that sudden epiphany.  
  
Physics tutor guy was full of crap.  
  
He snapped back to reality as Loki twisted his wrist, that thing he did when he was drawing something out of what he had once described as a 'dimensional pocket'. A phone fell into his palm and he flipped it open, aiming it at the hologram and taking a picture with a tinny, artificial 'click'.  
  
He did a double take, and then a triple take. For a moment the lingering indignity of having another person invade his workshop faded in the greater disgrace that was the crappy, outdated piece of tech in front of him. This was appalling. Here, in Tony Stark's personal lab, it approached heresy.  
  
"What," he said, the disgust and disbelief radiating from his voice so strong that it struck even him, "is that?"  
  
Loki gave him a bland look. "I am told it is called a cellular telephone. It's primary purpose is to allow one to communicate over a distance, though this one also records images for later perusal."  
  
Another thought struck him and bubbled out in a surge of incredulity. "Wait, didn't I give you guys Starkphones? Latest gen. There were features on those things that haven't hit the _stores_  yet. I customized them myself."  
  
"Yes," Loki said, looking thoughtful. He snapped the outdated abomination shut and disappeared it, because space wizards were apparently too good for regular pockets. "I believe you did."  
  
"So what are you doing with—" he gestured inarticulately to where the old man phone no longer was. He realized it was probably unhelpful, but the words wouldn't come. His outrage at the worthless junk had broken his word-putting-together abilities.  
  
"Taking a picture, clearly." He waved, a salute of farewell. "I shall let you know if I find a solution to your puzzle."  
  
Tony snorted. Fat chance. Loki may not have heard, though, because he had walked out of the lab.  
  
Straight through the wall. High-tech locks didn't help with people who could Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost their way through solid objects.  
  
Freakin' magic.

* * *

  
  
Tony had taken a break, then, at first because his mind was ranting too loud for him to think properly, and then because he realized those eight hours of proper sleep were now quite a while in the past, and he was probably inconveniently due for some more shortly.  
  
He went to the Tower's gym for a quick workout, mostly because the amount of time Steve spent there made him defensive when he thought too hard about it, and made himself a smoothie in that blender that had shown up not long after the first time Clint stayed here and remained over Tony's protests. He showered and thought he might go to bed like a normal human for once, but when he got caught up in designing a side project on his Starkpad and fell asleep on the couch, well, that was close enough.  
  
Something touching his shoulder jarred him awake, and he took a swing and missed. A miss he was grateful for ten seconds later when his brain caught up to the being-awake situation and he realized that, had Loki not dodged, he'd probably be nursing some broken fingers. Punching space aliens barehanded was not fun.  
  
Loki didn't apologize for startling him awake, but he didn't seem to mind almost having been socked, either. He watched Tony expectantly as he sat up and grumbled, then pulled something out of those annoyingly physics-defying magic pockets.  
  
"Here." He handed over a single sheet of paper with an elaborately shaded, geometric sketch on one side. Tony looked at it, turned it over, looked at it again, squinted, and then...  
  
The details clicked into place. No way, it wasn't possible, it didn't make any _sense_  for him to have...  
  
"This is it. The hinge I was working on," he said, suddenly completely awake. He tightened his grip on the paper; its edges crumped. "How—I didn't know you had a background in mechanics."  
  
"I don't," Loki said, smiling that enigmatic smile that he suddenly very much hated. "But that should work."  
  
"It will." He could tell that much, had worked it out as soon as his brain had fit the design together. In fact, now that he saw it he could already see how to improve it, make it more efficient, but it would work. "How did you—"  
  
"You're welcome," he said, and then he blinked out of sight like a creepy-ass ghost, and okay, it was pretty cool, but Tony wasn't in the mood for more mystery and theatrics at the moment.  
  
He was in the mood to try and make sense of this.  
  
Thor, he decided. If anyone could help him, it would be Thor.

* * *

  
  
"Heya, Point Break," he started when he found the enormous blond Viking watching videos on his Starkphone. Which he used instead of relics excavated from a bygone era, because that was the normal thing sensible people given a free Starkphone would do. "Quick question. Do you know if your brother has ever been into mechanical engineering?"  
  
Thor put aside the phone but frowned at him, brows knitted in confusion, so he clarified. "Back on Asgard, did he used to build things?"  
  
"What sort of things?" Thor asked, and he shrugged.  
  
"Like... robots, or machines, or automatons, anything like that?"  
  
Thor shook his head. "Not that I'm aware of, no." His expression brightened, and Tony almost groaned, because he could tell when an overly enthused Thor story was coming, and though they were generally fun and often challenged everything he believed to be true about the universe, he wasn't in the mood. "He did, however, spend a couple of decades obsessed with breeding new varieties of dragons. It was a perilous time to be in his company, for certain."  
  
"Okay, I'm ninety-five percent sure you're making that one up," Tony said.  
  
Thor shook his head. "No, I'm afraid it is the truth. " he chuckled. "At one point he succeeded in cross-breeding a swamp dragon and a miniature fire drake. The resultant creature was about the size of one of your Midgardian dogs and absolutely magnificent to behold, but it would occasionally puke boiling slime. He gifted it to a girl I fancied at the time. I don't think she's spoken to me since."  
  
"Okay," Tony said, because he was never sure where to start after one of Thor's stories, but he wasn't ready to abandon his investigation just yet. "The reason I ask is he solved a problem I've been struggling with for two days. Me. Tony Stark. Definitely not a beginner to this whole engineering thing. Any idea how he could have done that?"  
  
Thor shrugged again. "Perhaps he consulted the incredibly helpful mechanical being known as Google? It has proven most helpful when I have encountered situations where my knowledge is lacking."  
  
Tony scoffed. Then he thought about it, and he scoffed again. "Are you serious? If I'm having trouble with this, no way is he going to be able to just Google the answer. Nobody else's even thought to ask the questions I'm answering."  
  
Thor just shrugged, either too oblivious to notice his indignation or unbothered by it. Tony suspected the latter. One of the downsides of hanging out with thousand-plus-year-old Viking warriors was that they were crazy hard to intimidate. Apparently after slaying dragons with your bare hands or whatever Thor used to do for fun, a slightly peeved Tony Stark didn't even register.  
  
"I only mention it because it has proven quite helpful to me in the past. For example, the other day I wished to know how to prepare this dish I discovered called 'chicken tacos'. I found not only a recipe, but a helpful video that provided me with detailed instructions. Though now that I think on it," he admitted, "the result was not very like the ones that caused me to seek out the instructions in the first place. They were delicious, though."  
  
"Huh," was all Tony could say to that.  
  
"Does that surprise you?"  
  
"I guess I just didn't picture you doing much cooking, what with you being a prince from an uber-macho culture."  
  
Thor grinned. "I have spent my fair share of time seeking adventure, and when it was far afield, we spent many nights camped out in the wilds of near every realm. We could hardly bring along a personal chef on such outings."  
  
"Fair enough," Tony said.  
  
But fascinating as it was to learn about the culinary habits of alien royalty—  
  
"So no other ideas on how he could have done it?"  
  
Thor shook his head. "Perhaps you should ask him," he said meaningfully, and Tony sighed.  
  
"Tried that. He's being all smug and mysterious about it."  
  
"Ah," he said. "I wish you luck then."  
  
"Thanks." Tony waved a hand in farewell then set off to plot up a Plan B.

* * *

  
  
Could it have been a fluke? Tony wondered when no amount of thought brought forth a plausible explanation. Perhaps Loki had seen something similar on Asgard or one of the other super-advanced planets out there and happened to remember it.  
  
He pulled up the archives from one of his old suits and zeroed in on the thruster. He'd already figured out how to modify the design to withstand high temperature, but it was a problem that had thrown him for a loop at the time. He saved the old image to a portable drive with a projector and went Viking-wizard hunting.  
  
JARVIS informed him that Loki was in his room, and when he knocked on his door it pulled open to show the man in question, holding something cradled in one hand.  
  
Tony looked closer. It was the phone, that terrible, prehistoric piece of junk, pressed to the front of his shirt as though to muffle the speaker. Upon closer inspection, Tony realized it wasn't even just an old, outdated phone. It was a really ugly, clunky, beat-up old, outdated phone. If someone had cobbled together a phone from parts salvaged from the rubble of an exploded RadioShack, that phone would probably look nicer than this phone.  
  
Loki lifted the awful thing, murmured a pleasant "I'll call you back" into the receiver, then closed and disappeared it. "What can I do for you?" He met Tony's eyes, and it was hard to tell, but he thought there might be a layer of amusement under that composed blandness.  
  
Tony fiddled with the projector, running his fingers along the edge. "I've got another problem for you," he said, realizing as he did so that he was sort-of lying to someone who had "liesmith" as a nickname.  
  
Sometimes he wished he didn't have these little moments of clarity. His ideas sounded much smarter when he didn't think about them too hard.  
  
"Seeing as you were so helpful with the last one," Tony said, "I wanted to see if you had any ideas." All true. It still felt like a lie, though, and wasn't that how lie detectors were supposed to work? They didn't know the truth, they just read like, nervousness and heartbeats and stuff. He should look it up.  
  
Loki, though, only smiled. "I'll certainly try my best. What seems to be the problem?"  
  
Tony pulled out the projector, fired up the image, and started explaining the issues he had run into before the thruster was redesigned. He explained the parts, how they worked, and pointed out the place where the pressure differential cracked the casing when temperatures got too high. All the while, he kept half an eye on Loki, watching his reactions.  
  
The man watched closely, nodding at all the right times, but Tony had no idea whether he actually understood or was staring in blank but polite incomprehension.  
  
When Tony finished, he nodded, pulled out the abomination-phone, and calmly snapped a picture. "I shall ponder the issue," he announced, and the phone disappeared back to its pocket. "Was there anything further?"

* * *

  
  
For the next few hours, Tony was on edge. He couldn't focus on any of his current projects, and he found himself glancing over at the door ever few minutes, even getting up and walking halfway to the door before stopping himself.  
  
The eighteen-millionth time he glanced over his shoulder at the unmoving door, he looked back to find a face inches from his own.  
  
"Gaagh," he said, "stop doing that. I have heart issues, Casper, very serious, very real heart issues. You can't just keep slendermanning your way in here like this!"  
  
"Apologies," he said without sounding terribly sorry, and presented another piece of paper.  
  
Tony looked it over. The solution wasn't identical to the one he'd eventually come up with, and he still liked his better, but it... would work.  
  
When he finished studying the paper and went to speak, the room was empty.

* * *

  
  
It was fine, Tony told himself. People with over a thousand years of experience under their belt were bound to pick things up quickly (but a few hours to achieve near Tony-Stark level proficiency, really?). Dude had magic, for crying out loud (but magic was energy, or the manipulation of energy, it didn't give people the ability to design things, he'd _asked_ ). He had access to references from super-advanced civilizations that... actually, that might be it.  
  
He couldn't Google the answers, because no one else _on Earth_  had asked or answered these questions.  
  
Bingo. Now that he had a hypothesis, time to be a good scientist and find a way to test it.  
  
Asgardians, against all logic, stored their information hard copy, on paper of all things. Advanced alien civilizations still used the same ancient books available on Earth when Tony's great-great-grandad had been playing with whatever toys they gave toddlers way back when. When he'd asked Loki about it, he hadn't gotten a straight answer, only some weird and definitely fake story about an evil computer corrupted by magic that destroyed its own creator. They had absolutely let him watch too many movies.  
  
So give Loki a problem, see if he used any books. No big deal.  
  
Okay, maybe a bit of a big deal. If he could just watch the process, there would be no need for all this guessing in the first place.  
  
Still, he reasoned, it had to be possible. There were no Asgardian books labeled super-advanced alien technology 101 lying around (wouldn't that be nice), so Tony figured there were only two ways Loki could get one. One would be to take a trip to Asgard, which was possible, but somehow Tony doubted it was happening. Both Odinsons had made the occasional trip back home to retrieve belongings or do unavoidable princely-things or, in Loki's case, to search out more info on the special rocks he was obsessed with, but they'd always communicated with the team and each other beforehand.  
  
So that left the unfair space pockets. He had quite the library in there, at least if the amount of reading he typically did was anything to go by. So, in true scientist fashion, Tony could probably safely replace the 'is he using books' question with the hopefully more easily answered 'is he accessing his weird magic pockets' question.  
  
Which, still not so easy to determine, which is how Tony Stark came to be designing a magic detector for the express purpose of satisfying an entirely unproductive bit of curiosity.  
  
Magic was energy, and energy, no matter how weird or inexplicable it seemed, could be detected.  
  
He took the initial readings via Jarvis when Loki was in the common areas. Whenever Loki would heat water for tea without the microwave he didn't bother learning to use, or heal whatever minor injury Clint got while sparring Natasha then whined about in the sorcerer's presence with pointed, hopeful looks, or especially when anything appeared or disappeared, the AI would take every sort of reading his sensors could process.  
  
It was nosy and invasive, and Tony felt vaguely bad about it when he thought on it too hard, but satisfying his curiosity always won out against nebulous ideas like privacy.  
  
It paid off. A few scans and algorithms later, and Jarvis could detect magic. Better yet, the AI could tell whether magic was being used anywhere within a fairly wide radius, and could even specifically pick out the space-pockets spell.  
  
He found another old problem, a design flaw in one of the shoulders that severely limited his range of motion, and copied it over. He tried not to look too suspicious as he handed it over, and then he waited.  
  
This one took barely an hour. Fair enough—it wasn't a particularly hard problem, and he had solved it fairly quickly himself.  
  
“Jarvis,” he asked, “what's the word?”  
  
“I have not detected any of the energy signatures associated with Mr. Odinson's manipulation of space in the past few hours,” JARVIS said almost apologetically.  
  
Tony swore. Well, back to the drawing board.

* * *

  
  
Loki, upon agreeing to move in to the Avengers Tower, had issued one rule. He did not wish to be spied on, physically or electronically.  
  
As a result, his room was the only place in the Tower  (aside from bathrooms, for obvious reasons) not equipped with the microphones and cameras that allowed JARVIS to, well, JARVIS. Thor, for whatever reason, did not share the same aversion, and everyone else just sort of accepted that a little bit of surveillance was inevitable.  
  
JARVIS didn't like it. _Tony_  didn't like it. But it was a reasonable request, after a fashion, and they had grudgingly agreed. A man was allowed to have his rules, and good friends respected those boundaries.  
  
However, the workshop thing had been Tony's one rule, and Tit-for-Tat was something that it seemed to him Vikings would, if not appreciate, then certainly understand.  
  
He didn't dare try for a camera. Turns out people raised in warrior cultures where nearly everything wants to kill you become crazy perceptive, even if they are seriously hard to kill. But he thought he could get a microphone secreted away where it wouldn't be detected, and that might possibly shed some light on what was going on.  
  
He made the bug as sensitive and as tiny as he was able, crafting the components using microrobotics when they were too small and solving several puzzles of his own to finish the design (by himself, because he didn't want Rudolph to guess what it was for and not because of a pride thing, thankyouverymuch.) The finished mic was barely the size of a flea and could pick up a whisper across the room. He gave it little spider legs and set it to crawling under the man's bed, because he had read enough fantasy books growing up to be wary of going into a wizard's private space uninvited, and held his breath as it crossed the threshold.  
  
Nothing sparked or exploded or turned into a frog, so either Loki hadn't set wards on the door or they hadn't considered his bug important enough to fry.  
  
Now all he had to do was ask a question and wait.  
  
He brought the portable projector to the common area and tapped the man in question on the shoulder, the petty part of him hoping it would startle him even as the sensible part of him screamed that would be a horrible idea. It didn't matter, though, because he looked up calmly and set the book he was reading aside.  
  
“Another one?” Loki had clearly stopped even trying to hide the amusement in his tone, and Tony gritted his teeth.  
  
“Yep. I'm trying to add an oxygen recycler but the reaction slows to a stop if the outside temperature gets too low.” The suit had an oxygen recycler, and it worked just fine, but he'd been able to tweak the designs so that there would be a problem if it was built according to the blueprints he now projected.  
  
“Very well.” He took a picture and stood, retreating to his room.  
  
Tony rushed to his lab, had Jarvis activate the feed from the bug, and waited.  
  
A faint scuffing and the closing of the door let him know Loki was in his room. The bed creaked as though some one had flopped down onto it (and whoa, the speaker quality was amazing. Sometimes Tony impressed himself.).  
  
There was a tapping like an old-fashioned keyboard, and then a dial tone like the ones that phones had way back in the eighties.  
  
The voice that spoke next was tinny and familiar. “Another one already? He must be going crazy. Please tell me you got a picture of his face.”  
  
The raccoon. The one from that space gang, the band of lovable misfits with the pretentious name, as though five people could guard the entire galaxy.  
  
“Unfortunately not.” Loki sounded far too amused with himself. “I can attempt one when I present the solution, if you want.”  
  
“Oh, I want.”  
  
Tony stared at the speakers in shock. Loki's raccoon-friend was _in space_. That ratty old phone _could call space_.  
  
“So what do you think,” Loki said after a second's pause. “Can you fix it?”  
  
The raccoon scoffed. “Yeah, this one's not even that hard. I don't know why he built it this way in the first place. Here, give me a second.”  
  
Another pause, and Tony swore he could hear the sound of tinkering over the phone. His new microphone was the _best_.  
  
“How is Groot?”  
  
“He's doing fine. We think he might be having another growth spurt, though. He keeps trying to eat the adapters for the fuel pumps.”  
  
“Hm.” Loki shifted on the bed with a crinkling of fabric, and he had a sudden mental image of the semi-terrifying Viking sprawled out on his stomach, swinging his legs like a preteen girl talking boys at a sleepover.  
  
He suppressed a laugh until he remembered that the microphones didn't go both ways, then straight-up laughed.  
  
“You could try increasing the concentration of minerals in his water,” Loki suggested.  
  
“He's been drinking soda.”  
  
“That may be the problem.”  
  
“Here, I'm sending you a schematic.”  
  
There was a short electronic chirp, and Loki's “got it.”  
  
A thin scratching sound made him check the speaker before he realized it was the scratch of pencil on paper.  
  
“So how're the superheroes of Earth? Wishing you'd come with yet?”  
  
“Thor's discovered country music.” Tony could hear the grimace.  
  
“As someone who's listened to ‘Hooked on a Feeling’ fifteen times today, I have exactly zero sympathy.”  
  
“At least that's catchy. Here, is this right?”  
  
“Almost. Move the line in the top right corner up about an inch and a half.”  
  
More pencil scratching sounds. “Like this?”  
  
They went back and forth a few more times, making adjustments, then spent probably another ten minutes talking before ending the call.  
  
Tony stared at the console, feeling numb. On the one hand, Tony Stark wasn't being shown up by a novice. On the other, the person who had been solving his design problems was a raccoon.  
  
Which wasn't bad, exactly, but it sounded like something a crazy person would say.  
  
And apart from that, on top of that, one of the people living in his tower had a pen-pal in space. Phone-pal. Whatever.  
  
Tony couldn't decide whether he was put-out, impressed, or jealous.

* * *

  
  
Loki met him in the common area and handed over another of the drawings. He barely glanced at it, just enough to confirm that yes, it would work, before he folded it and tucked it into a back pocket.  
  
“Very nice,” he said. “Tell Rocket thanks for me.”  
  
Loki looked for a half-second like he was going to protest, then laughed. “I wondered if you would figure that out.”  
  
“Figure what out?” Thor came up behind them, eating a snow cone. Where he got a snow cone, Tony couldn't guess.  
  
“Loki has a phone that can call the Guardians,” Tony said, “and he uses it to gossip about us.”  
  
“What can I say? Sometimes I am in need of intelligent conversation.”  
  
Tony sputtered, but Loki looked amused, so he was joking. Probably.  
  
“So do you actually understand any of this stuff, or...”  
  
He frowned, but it was more thoughtful than offended, fortunately. “I dare say I understand the basic workings of the universe better than you shall achieve in your short lifetime.” Before Tony could protest, because, rude, he continued. “Though as for this method of application... I could probably work out the basics, were I so inclined, but no, I have no experience in that department.”  
  
Tony nodded, satisfied, then eyed the phone Loki was typing on, presumably relaying the conversation to his space buddy. “I want one,” Tony said abruptly. A phone that could communicate over light-years? So cool. Besides, the raccoon had seemed neat enough, and it wouldn't hurt to have an open line to an engineer from space.  
  
“Then build one,” Loki said without skipping a beat. “Perhaps you can repurpose whatever listening device you used to spy on our conversation, if you can recover it before I find it.” He grinned, and okay, Rudolph could still be a bit scary.  
  
But hey, he wasn't threatening vengeance, and actually didn't even seem that mad, so not _too_  scary. Maybe being friends with the space raccoon was good for him.  
  
“JARVIS,” he said, “Create a new project folder titled Operation Space Phone.”  


**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is the last of the one-shots in this series I have planned/written. I'm leaving the series marked unfinished, however, because I'm still pondering writing a full-length sequel. Anyone up for a Dark World AU?
> 
> In the meanwhile, I do have other projects underway, so it shouldn't be too terribly long before I'm posting again. Y'all have a great day!


End file.
